Print projects to DV tape directly from the Vegas timeline

johnmeyer wrote on 6/3/2002, 2:57 PM

I'm working up the courage (and saving up the money) to upgrade from VF to VV 3.0. Before I do, however, I have one question that I've never been able to figure out for sure. Here it is:

If I capture from DV, and print back to DV tape, and if my project is nothing but cuts and rearranging clips on the timeline (no FX, no transistions, etc.), can I print to tape without having to wait for Vegas to render? Also, if I do add a few transitions, will Vegas only render the transitions, and not spend the time and disk space to render the portions of the project where the pixels in the video haven't changed at all?

I'm still forced to use Pinnacle's Studio DV because it has these features, and for a cuts-only project, it saves so much time and disk space that I can't afford to use VF. If Vegas has this capability, then it's so long Studio DV once I upgrade.

Comments

Jessariah67 wrote on 6/3/2002, 3:12 PM

I believe it still renders, it just won't take nearly as long. My understanding is that the more "stuff" you've got going (layers of events, filters, transitions) the longer it takes. But it will still render, as it has to go from several events to a single file.

someone correct me if I'm wrong.

johnmeyer wrote on 6/3/2002, 3:21 PM

Boy, that's really disappointing, if true. The beauty of the Pinnacle Studio DV approach is that as soon as I'm finished editing a cuts-only project, I can print to tape. No time needed for any rendering whatsoever, and no disk space taken. In addition, if I do alter the video by adding titles, transitions, or other effects, the rendering is only done on the frames of video that actually have different pixels from the original. If all I have done is change the place on the timeline where that frame occurs, no rendering is needed; it simply reads the video from the original file and plays the frames in a different order.

I've read the Vegas manual and all the marketing literature, but I still can't figure out whether the "Print to tape from timeline" feature does what I want.

SonyEPM wrote on 6/3/2002, 3:48 PM

"If I capture from DV, and print back to DV tape, and if my project is nothing but cuts and rearranging clips on the timeline (no FX, no transistions, etc.), can I print to tape without having to wait for Vegas to render?"

Vegas will sniff the project first and see what, if anything, needs to be rendered. In this case, no video will need rendering. A needed audio proxy file will be generated, but that is all. The wait will be minimal.

"Also, if I do add a few transitions, will Vegas only render the transitions, and not spend the time and disk space to render the portions of the project where the pixels in the video haven't changed at all?"

Vegas will render only what needs to be rendered, the transitions in this case.

jb_slimp wrote on 6/3/2002, 11:56 PM

I have printed to tape a thirty minute project with very few transitions and FX. VV3 will do a pre-render. Mine took less than 3 minutes and it was printing to the DV tape. On the other hand I had a 40 minute project with lots of fades,transitions, and FX and the pre-render took over 10 hours.

HPV wrote on 6/4/2002, 1:21 AM

If Vegas has this capability, then it's so long Studio DV once I upgrade.
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Hang onto Studio DV. It will live nice besides Vegas. Just delete the Pinnacle Codecs. Studio will still work with the MS DV codec. Studio does one thing Vegas can't do. Load a rendered AVI, scrub to somewhere other than the start, play out to firewire. Great for dubbing short parts from bigger AVI's.
Vegas 3.0 goes one better than Studio on smart rendering. If you change anything in Studio, every render section will have to re-render. In Vegas, renders are in 10 sec. chunks. One title change at the end won't blow the whole batch of renders.
The rendering of the Wave 64 audio file is something Studio doesn't have to do, but it's worth it for perfect audio in Vegas.
There is sooooooooo much more in Vegas, your going to freak. Get it, and dive in.

Craig H.

johnmeyer wrote on 6/4/2002, 1:30 AM

Thanks. That's just what I needed to know. And straight from the horses mouth ...

johnmeyer wrote on 6/4/2002, 1:33 AM

Thanks for the additional info. I use sCLive for capture, and it also has the ability to play any DV AVI file back to the camera, from any position in the file, so I can use that instead of Studio. Studio is just so darn buggy, and so sluggish that I always have to cross my fingers when I do something. However, avoiding that extra hour to basically just copy the project, and eating all that disk space for no good reason has kept me using it. Looks like those days are over now ...

riredale wrote on 6/4/2002, 6:36 AM

I just became familiar with VV3 a month ago, and it offers a lot more power and flexibility. But I also suggest you take a look at StudioDV's successor, Studio7 (up to version 7.13 now), before cutting the lines completely. It's pretty stable, and it offers a lot more than SDV. I think of VV3 as more of a much-improved Premiere, not a S7 replacement.

There is no doubt that VV3 is terrific, but there is one area where I still think S7 is great: the ability to load all your DV in "Preview" mode. Last summer I shot 14 hours of video in Italy for a choir tour, and later produced a 1-hour movie from it. I was able to load all 14 hours into the PC at one time, and pick and choose among all that footage effortlessly. Once all the editing was finished, S7 went back and asked for the original tapes and loaded in only the raw DV clips needed in the final product.

In preview mode, the 14 hours ate up 15GB. Let's see, in raw DV mode, 14 hours would be about 185GB! If the concept is not patented, I hope VV offers that feature someday.

FadeToBlack wrote on 6/4/2002, 1:03 PM

johnmeyer wrote on 6/4/2002, 2:43 PM

Actually, I have Studio 7, not Studio DV, and I find it just as buggy as Studio DV. The preview mode never appealed to me, partly for the reasons noted by riredale, but also because I seldom have projects where I'm only going to use 10% of my captured footage. If you're going to use most of your captured footage, then the preview capture doesn't really help much. A good compromise -- and one I use -- is to use sCLive for capture. It features a batch capture facility that captures the entire one hour tape in less than five minutes (fast forward capture). You then pick the scenes you want to capture, and it goes back and gets them at full resolution.